Sick on Santorini (cont'd)

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At 10 a.m. I arose and gingerly went about my morning, fully expecting the dizziness, weakness, fever, drippy nose, coughing, and withal to come crashing down on me. They didn't. I took stock of my situation and my state, and decided I could attempt the outside world today for more than just a trip to the pharmakeio and a gyro for lunch. I called a hotel in Prague to book a room for next week, as none of the hotels I faxed ever got back to me, though I had always called immediately afterward to make sure each fax got through. Luckily, though, the first place I called cold, the Betlem Club had a single available for about $40 a night, so I booked July 12–14 there.

I briefly reconnoitered with my hoary legions of white blood cells to sign a pact that they would continue the fight against the insidious Scottish infection even if I abandoned bed for bus and made a short excursion, and glanced at the Greek word for "better" as I stuffed my dictionary in my satchel so that when, as I headed out the door and clambered up the stairs past the hotel's other terraces, the nice hotel lady interrupted her conversation with a departing couple to ask me something I could never translate but understood perfectly, I was able to reply "kalyteros" with a weakly triumphant smile, and she smiled back in that beatific, grandmotherly way.

The ruins of Akrotiri were half an hour away by bus, and interesting enough — though I can only imagine how the few houses they've yet excavated under the enormous shed of corrugated tin and plastic must have looked with their remarkable frescoes in place, frescoes that are currently stored in the protective environment of the Athens Archaeology Museum until a suitable museum can be built here (the famous images were reproduced at the site, of course: a lithe brown fisherman proudly holding up heavy strings of caught fish like bunches of bananas, two chestnut youths boxing, a frieze of flowers and long-leafed plants painted around the base of a wall, an oversized canoe bristling with men going off to war).

I asked the bus driver on the way back to drop me off at Boutari, the largest winery on Santorini. I had to wait about an hour for a tour in English, but occupied myself by reading today's paper thoroughly and drinking the vino santo (they've got it here, too) that the young lady at the winery's shop cash register brought over to me after apparently thinking I had flirted with her when I offered her some ibuprofin for her toothache (the French couple she had just been dealing with had been rather rude, and she had looked tired and schlumpy, so, reminding myself that folks behind cash registers are people too and that many other people seem to forget this, I had smiled and asked if she was feeling tired, which prompted the toothache revelation).

Of course, she was the one who ended up leading our tour, in Greek and English, and mostly looked at me while spieling off the English bit, which was uncomfortable, so I looked back as much as I thought necessary for politeness, concentrating on her carefully detailed inky eye shadow (thick as an Egyptian's on a wall painting) but spent most of the time staring intently at the sides of steel vats or the steel bands holding together the French oak staves of the aging barrels. When it came time for the tasting at the end, I notice she poured a considerably more generous splash of each wine into my glass than into the others. Maybe I should have kindness mistaken for flirting more often!

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